Kalidou Koulibaly has called on his Napoli teammates to aim to win their upcoming games after they fell to a 2-0 defeat against Sassuolo in Sunday’s Serie A fixture.
Second-half goals from Manuel Locatelli and Maxime Lopez did the damage for Sassuolo at the Stadio San Paolo as the hosts suffered their second loss in the Italian top-flight this season – the first being a 3-0 forfeit for not honouring their away game against Juventus in October.
Gennaro Gattuso's side created the most chances in the encounter but they were unlucky not to find the back of the net for the first time in a league match in this campaign.
Koulibaly who played the entire duration – his fifth league appearance, apologised for Sunday's loss and urged the Parthenopeans to shift their focus to Thursday's Europa League away match against Croatian club Rijeka and their next Serie A trip to Bologna on November 8.
“Tonight, we wanted to win but we didn’t. We’re sorry for the defeat. If we stop at this defeat, we won’t improve,” Koulibaly was quoted by Football Italia.
“We can’t use last Thursday’s game as an alibi. We need to think about winning this Thursday’s game against Rijeka and on Sunday in the League against Bologna, let’s think big.
“We created many opportunities to score, but we didn’t grab them.”
Napoli dropped to fifth in the Serie A table after the loss with 11 points after six games.
Nigeria striker Victor Osimhen also played the entire duration on Sunday, but he won’t be available for selection in the Europa League on Thursday after he received his first career red card in their 1-0 win over Real Sociedad last week.
